In a foreign country at the end of my marriage, I traveled nomadically for 11 months staying in 24 places throughout Holland, Portugal, Canada, USA, Brazil and Argentina before buying a home.

It made such an impression on me that I intentionally set out on a second nomadic trip to further explore the concepts of mobility, simplicity, and perspective. While doing my graduate degree, I camped in 30 places in 55 weeks. Now I host urban nomads through the Couchsurfing Project.

02 September 2007

A House as Big as a Mountain

Rotterdam is having its year of architecture in 2007. In the train station is a huge poster of the shanty towns of Caracas in Venezuela.

The picture looks exactly like the favellas I have toured in Rio, where the side of the mountain is covered with cube upon cube. Each little house is wedged between two more and stacked upon the others. The surface is haphazardly dotted with doors and windows.

The caption to this photo says,

"DIT IS GEEN BERGVOL HUIZEN, HET ISEEN HUIS ZO GROOTALS EEN BERG"

My translation follows:

"This is not a mountainfull of houses, it is a house as bigas a mountain."

3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

dear jennifer, i'm a reporter at the new york times, and i'd like to write about your urban camping, your new homesteading, and your fellow couch surfers. how might we speak on the phone? you can reach me at greenpe@nytimes.com. huge thanks, penelope green

Found your site through the NY Times article and thought of the book "Off the Map" by Hib and Kika. It's a story of two women hitchhiking and squatting in Europe. Sounds like a similar sort of ethos. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0970910134/1n9867a-20)

Found your site from a reprint of the NYT article in the South China Morning Post.

Your description of these homes reminds me of the fishermans village near the ferry pier on Lamma Island, where I live. They're brightish colors (for Hong kong) and all have air-conditioners, though are built on stilts, and look like they could fall apart before the next typhoon.

About Me

I want mobility:Get-up-and-go in the global village. Navigation to other vantage points. What does the world look like from there? Is there room to move? Or am I tied down to my stuff?

I want simplicity:Real needs and wants are fewer than they sometimes seem. 'Accumulation' is as inevitable as death and taxes. Can I prune back the attention-stealing stuff to give space to the useful and meaningful things?

I want perspective:
Understanding of how multi-faceted life is. Consideration of options. Is the world getting smaller? Or is MY WORLD getting smaller? How many viewpoints have I seen so far? Is there a 'road less traveled' or a million billion different roads? Can I 'get out of the woods' and look for multiple angles?